“But whatever it is that we grow,” Sage added, still smarting from Emily’s offhand dismissal of what they cultivated in their greenhouses, “more times than not it tends to be more interesting than mere tomatoes and phlox. Some of us bring in cuttings and seedlings from all over the world. I have all sorts of things thriving in my greenhouse right now that most Americans have never even heard of-would never even have dreamed of! And Anise? Her work is even more extraordinary. Anise is brilliant: You simply can’t imagine. The things either of us could tell you about the power of herbs and tinctures and blood and-”
“Yes, Sage,” Clary said, squeezing her arm and cutting her off. “We all know that you grow some remarkable things. But we don’t want to bore the girls!”
“What do you mean by blood?” Emily asked. “I presume you don’t put blood in tinctures or potions.”
“Oh,” Sage said, her voice more measured than a moment ago but still edgy, “I only meant the effect a natural remedy can have on the blood-on a person’s health.”
“Herbs and tinctures and blood,” Chip said, and because he had barely spoken since they arrived, everyone turned to him expectantly. Even the girls. He sat down in an easy chair upholstered with images of honeysuckle vines. “Sometimes I think I could use a good herbalist these days.”
Emily could tell there was a subterranean layer of sarcasm in his remark, but only because they had known each other so long. She was confident that only she had even an inkling that he might be mocking the need for an herbalist. Moreover, she also believed that it wasn’t precisely that he lacked faith in herbal medicine; rather, it was that he had problems of his own that in his opinion far transcended the powers of cohosh and ginseng.
“Tell us, Hallie: What specifically do you like about the greenhouse?” Clary asked, not exactly ignoring Chip but not responding to his remark, either.
“Well, it’s, like, Garnet’s and my own special place,” the girl answered.
“It is your own special place, isn’t it? Places have auras, and I am so glad you appreciate the aura of that greenhouse.”
“We haven’t spent a lot of time there yet,” Garnet added. “It’s kind of cold right now.”
“Of course it is. But Sage and Anise and I will be happy to help you decide what to grow there. We can bring by seedlings and starters and roots. We can-”
“I was serious,” Emily said, careful to smile as she interrupted Clary. “I think the girls want it to be a playhouse. Dolls and games and secrets-that sort of thing.”
Sage stared at her, the woman’s eyes narrowing just the tiniest bit. “You know that Peyton’s father built that greenhouse. You know it was on land that was carefully dowsed.”
“I didn’t know that. But, still, it seems to be metal framing and big pieces of glass with a good southern exposure. It’s beautifully built, and your father-in-law’s company did very good work: I don’t know much about greenhouses, but I can tell that for sure. You can be very proud. But, well, it’s a greenhouse-not a nuclear power plant.”
“No, it’s certainly not. But tell me, Emily: Could you design a greenhouse?”
“No, but I could call a company that makes them and order one.”
“There was more to it than that,” Sage told her, her tongue clicking hard on the last word, and Emily was just about to say she agreed, she understood, she was just being glib. It wasn’t that she actually believed she had said something that might merit an apology; rather, she simply wanted to deescalate the conversation. But before she had opened her mouth, John and Peyton returned with the girls’ Shirley Temples and her and Chip’s glasses of red wine.
“You’re going to like this, Chip,” Peyton told her husband.
“And you girls are going to love these,” said John, leaning over and handing each of the twins a wide tumbler blushing with grenadine syrup. “It’s my secret ingredient.”
“And that is?” asked Chip.
“A magician never reveals the secret behind an illusion. And notice I did not use the word trick.”
“Any special reason?” Emily asked.
“A trick suggests I have taken advantage of people or fooled them. Played a joke of some sort on them. I prefer to leave that sort of bad behavior to my work as an attorney.”
“Just so long as it’s not an herbal narcotic or magic hallucinogen of some kind,” Chip remarked. “Drink up, girls.”
Everyone turned to him, a little nonplussed by the inappropriateness of the comment. But he simply raised his wineglass in a silent toast and took a sip. “You were right, Peyton. This is a delightful wine. A great selection.”
And Peyton nodded and the girls sipped their Shirley Temples, a little tentatively at first but then voraciously, as Peyton told the grown-ups how he and Sage had discovered the vineyard on a tasting tour in Northern California last year, and how the Malbec was a new varietal for these wine growers. Chip’s strange admonition was ignored, and the small party quickly regained its footing. Emily was relieved. She had the sense that everyone was. Before the children had finished their Shirley Temples, John was escorting them up the stairs to the playroom, and Emily told herself that Sage and Clary were only following her daughters with their eyes because the girls were twins and they were indeed adorable. There was nothing more to it than that.
“So, tell me,” Chip was saying. “What’s Clary short for? Clarice?”
“Oh, it’s not short for anything at all,” the woman said, pushing herself to her feet and then sitting on the spot on the pouf that Hallie had vacated. “It’s just Clary. I was named after the herb.”
“Clary? I don’t believe I know that herb,” Emily confessed.
“Treats women’s problems,” Peyton said, and he laughed, even rolling his eyes.
“Oh, stop it, Peyton, you know it does much more than that,” Clary chastised him, though it was evident that this was a long-running joke between the two friends.
“I do. I do, indeed,” he agreed.
There was a short lull in the conversation, and in the pause Emily listened to the low murmur of John’s voice upstairs as he showed the girls how to work the DVD player and then she heard the sound of the television. She couldn’t make out the program, but the girls laughed either at something the lawyer had said or at something on the screen. It really didn’t matter which. They sounded content enough, and so she turned her attention to her hostess and her new friends and settled in for the evening.
Y ou wake up when you hear the murmuring voices. You pull your way like a swimmer from the torrents of another sleep burdened by dreams of airplanes crashing hard into the earth, and you sit up in bed. There beside you, your wife slumbers soundlessly. She is curled on her side and has heard nothing. It doesn’t strike you as the slightest bit odd that you are confident the voices are neither burglars nor intruders. Almost abstractedly, you scan this room in the foothills along the western spine of the White Mountains, your bedroom-but still not a room that offers even a shadow of the familiarity and intimacy you associate with that word: bedroom. This still is but a room with a bed. The digital clock on Emily’s dresser reads 2:55. Not quite three in the morning. You left the Hardins’ about eleven and were in bed by midnight. Asleep then by 12:15. You still have the faint taste in your mouth of Peyton’s wines from Sonoma and the special canapes that Clary kept passing to you. (I know you will like these, Chip. I just know it.)
The voices are coming from someplace in the house below you, not from the floor above. And so it seems that the speakers are not Hallie and Garnet. Besides, they’re grown-ups. You knew that the moment you awoke. Still, isn’t it conceivable that the girls are watching something on television at three in the morning and the grown-ups are characters in a movie or Disney Channel sitcom or whatever is being beamed into your house that moment via a satellite and a dish? But then you remember: You don’t have a dish yet. You had one in West Chester. Not here. You have one on order, but it is not going to be installed until this coming Tuesday morning. And so if these sounds are indeed grown-ups, then the girls must be watching a DVD.